


He Chose Honor

by 13letters



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 07:07 Spoilers, F/M, Honor, Integrity, Introspection, Redemption, Romance, follows seasons 2-7, how many farewells?, in defense of: Jaime Lannister, oathkeeper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 21:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: He chose her.





	He Chose Honor

She was always so stern. Stalwart. Strong. Stoic.

 

He hadn't missed her sharp inhale each time his horse nearly threw him several times a day, as if he annoyed her, as if his.. well, physical impairment inconvenienced her, but he hadn't missed the side glances she occasionally threw him either, and he wanted to laugh at how ludicrous the image of her diving from her steed to save him lest he fall was.

It's hilarious until he's in her arms since his rotting skin, the fever that welcomes in his delirium, the shade of his skin pallor paler and deader each day with weakness could kill him if he couldn't survive his horse throwing him.

There was a softness around her eyes when he did see her looking at him with that inkling of concern, but he'd pretend for her sake that he didn't notice any fear souring her expression. It's what they do.

 

He cracks a joke at his expense instead of hers one day, but oh, how severely she disregards his self-depreciating, clever insults with a fight she never takes arms up for herself.

 

The skin ravaged at his right hand's stump is a ghastly color; she doesn't mention the stink if he won't, but believe it, his mind is elsewhere with golden sheens of hair flowing around his face delicately, twining with his as he tumbles with his other half on crimson and golden sheets.

 

Brienne, though, was stoic. Stern. Strong. Stalwart. Sensitive, yet he isn't thinking any of those when he says the words before he can snatch them back with his good hand and his vow to not think about it.

"Call her by her name," and his voice was clearer than it had been in weeks. "Her name is Brienne."

He wonders when he stopped referring to her as _wench_. He wonders when he became _Jaime_ to her.

 

She's falling asleep, her head nodding so her chin meets her collarbones before she jerks back up just as suddenly, the blue in her eyes forcibly wide and awake and bright blue in the moonlight.

Her head lolls down again until she snaps it back, and he winces at the sound it makes when it collides with the tree trunk she rest on. But she was alright, always is, her knuckles white where she clutches her sword. She drifts to sleep again.

Her breaths always lingered with a certain slowness, a fullness, all deep and concentrated before gradually slowing to a rhythmic pattern, he knew, it meant she was asleep (alive, when he didn't think too hard about it, not that he was concerned when her breaths were so relaxed as she slept, she could have been dead for all he knew, all he cared), and it brought him his peace, too.

So slowly, since slumber couldn't take his mind when dark thoughts were, he rises from his bed of dirt and leaves until he stumbles to the tree she sleeps at. She doesn't stir, of course she doesn't, and he doesn't want to think of how long it had been since she really did last sleep soundly.

He doesn't want to think about the nights he felt almost feverish, pained, feeling five fingers and a palm where there was only nothing, where he could sometimes feel the reins that should be in his hand or the dirty hem of his frayed sleeve snagging the coarse hair at his arms, and he could almost feel it, so much that it was excruciating and burning and being _fucking chopped again_ , almost --

 

No. It didn't pain him as much now if he was being honest with himself, but the trick was that he never was, so no harm, right? Just a jape and a smirk at the wench when she asked him if he was sure he was alright for the eleventh time.

The one time he answered no, when he swallowed mud moments after swaying off his mount and falling because his vision was spotting and his breathing was rapid and he could barely see, he did see the strange look in her eyes when she watched him. She had made their camp after that, as small as it was, and he managed to fall asleep before too long, missing how stalwart his Lady Wench was as she took guard and only just pretended to be annoyed by his snoring.

He didn't snore.

Except he did, and he was, and his snoring wakes Brienne with another jolt of her head up, eyes wide and awake and bright blue in the moonlight and settling on his sleeping face pressed to the bark of the tree behind them, just inches away from her own face.

He looked so young in his slumber, so detached from the horrors of the world and the cruelty residing in it that he could have been the boy who wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne. That he was that boy. That man, and she didn't have any trouble staying awake the rest of that long night; there was something worth protecting and cherishing and keeping alive next to her.

He needed the sleep more than she did, and her eyes were bright blue in the moonlight as she deftly watched their surroundings.

 

Brienne always snores. Like a bloody bear. It's ironic, gives him solace all the same.

 

"He isn't the man he once was," she says, or something close to it.

Her voice is plaintive, and if it were months ago, he -- well.

 _"Kiss me or curse me,"_ he had said, or something close to it.

He hadn't meant it; he almost never means the things he says, but days after that was when she had shaken him awake, alert and frightful and strong.

 _"Was it another dream?"_ She didn't call them nightmares. He had never thanked her. It wasn't on his mind just then. Cersei wasn't either.

 

 _"I dreamed of you,"_ and her astonishing blue eyes were never more truthful than they were then.

 

"Innocence."

 

She was always so stern. Stalwart. Strong. Stoic. 

She's the truest knight he's ever known. He tries to not feel like he's lost something in watching her ride away. It's always been unspeakably easy for him to break promises.

 

He doesn't say it, but the reign of Cersei will turn this country into a graveyard. He's sure of it.

Somedays, the warrior in him is tired, and some nights, he doesn't see an advantage to winning back Riverrun. He only sees more death. 

He thinks the Black Fish deserves a noble death as befitting a man as great as his own legend, but mostly, Jaime thinks he's reciting empty words, has been groomed for command not by his father but by his sister. 

War is only just a game.

Mostly, he thinks he left his conviction in tepid water, left his purpose with the grime of a months' journey free from his skin in Harrenhal, but truthfully, he doesn't think much of anything until honor walks into his tent like his heart made flesh and more noble. 

Her who looks more gaunt and cutting. Who doesn't shine with glory like she did once upon what might have been a song about them. Instead she looks grievous and so, so sorry; she looks like she's realized there isn't any honor in killing or in death. 

And looks like she did the last time they parted ways, and already, he knows this will result in _good-bye._

_Good fortune._

_You look well._

_I'm so sorry, Lady Brienne, I --_

_You aren't the man I thought you were. You aren't._

_Farewell._

"Honor compels me to fight for Lady Sansa," she states unnecessarily. To say they've always been a battlefield would be a poetic hyperbole. 

To say he meant his respect, his trust, his dignity, his loyalty, his earnestness is hers, it all belongs to her, would be a truth he'd let himself call a lie. 

It isn't honor that compels him to fight for his sister. Only now, he isn't so sure it's love either. 

In the end, he watches her sail away. He can't bring himself to look for too long.

 

 _"You can't love that beast,"_ Cersei had sneered.

He doesn't think he did until then.

 

When he sees the ashes in the sky, he can smell the putrid stench of burning flesh like it was only yesterday: the horror, the broken vow, the burning, mangled bodies in the nightmare made to blackened flesh. 

He can't vocalize what he feels when he sees Cersei sit high on that Throne. 

He's never been all that articulate or pragmatic. He's only ever known how to differentiate between right and wrong and which force to obscure with arrogance and confidence. He's only ever known what it is to be hated while she claimed to be the only soul to love him. 

He's only sure he loved Tommen best. His boy was to be all of Jaime's youthful aspirations and hopes made true. He wasn't supposed to have to choose between justice or the rest of the world in his mother's palm; Tommen was just a boy. 

Robb was just a boy. Rickon was just a boy, Lancel just a boy, Loras just a boy, Renly just a boy, Bran just a boy, _himself_ just a boy and not understanding anything about politics or loyalty when it kills. 

He was just a boy playing at honor without ever having seen blood, and he was just a boy who confused justice for perdition. 

He sees Cersei sit up there with regal bearing and nonchalance, and he sees her pushing down a toddler Tyrion as he tries to teach him to walk. 

In this instant, he isn't sure who he hates more. 

 

Lately, he's learning the reflection in the mirror hurts. Looking at Cersei _hurts_ like that blade cutting skin from bone, like being burned alive at the wrist to a torch's cauterization and smelling his rot. 

_"What are you doing?"_ Brienne asked him once. 

_"Dying,"_ he replied. 

And like he closed his eyes then, he squeezes his eyes closed so he's kissing Cersei blind. He doesn't want to see her face like his like piety like all the congenuity Lannister blood should have. He isn't sure where in all their mistakes they went wrong.

 

"I may as well be your wife," she practically spits in his face, and he believes all the castle can hear.

When he throws back, "But you aren't," like the golden dragon he might've paid her the first time they ever lay together, it doesn't feel like victory. It tastes like the wine she drinks, sweet on his tongue. 

 

It's a tale as all the tragedies go with a flicker of romance and a penchant of heroism. The parallels drawn between a crowd of awed admirers and a raging sea of support and glory: gold glittering like high praise and salvation, cheers so akin to the whisper of a weapon sheathed, death like the quiet, small voice whispering that it might be alright from this battlefield away to think of this as _the end_.

Jaime Lannister tries to breathe.  
He tries to fight this unforgiving adversary like hell like high water, like it could extinguish the fire above like breath would snuff out a candle, but he's kicking and clawing and grappling and begging and cursing and _trying_ to break the surface above until he isn't.

He's a sinking stone of a man burdened by his own armor, almost killed by his own figurative sword since irony has made him a legend and his litany of smiles have made him his own villain. It's the most poignant free fall in the face of all eternity -- his life on the brink of death yet waiting still, standing to face this as a knight would, "Ser Jaime," he hears.  
   
It's from so far away.

Winter wasn't yet a blanket of snow to bury this graveyard of a continent, it was summer more like autumn, leaves that crackled like the flames of a fire gone out, the shadows of midnight dark across the Wench's worried face. "What are you doing?" she asked him.

And red with fever, sweaty and sickly and smoldering and _dying_ , he shakes with his chattering teeth. The rotted stump of his right hand promises to kill him with his temperature so high he'd burn deeper than any hell, but it's so cold, too, and with his blue lips. His paling skin. The wind surrounding them beckons his closed eyes to his watery grave impending. "Dying," he answers back.

It isn't the breath of fresh air he hoped it would be. In defiance, he tries to swim, but his arms feel almost as heavy as his eyelids.

 _"No,"_ she had spoke, with more merit and integrity than anyone who had ever addressed him. _"No, you must live."_

So he does.

 

"I don't care about anything else," Cersei hisses. In anger, her face just twists and twists and twists. He hasn't truly recognized her in years. "We will stay here, Jaime. We will live and rule together. Isn't this what you've always wanted? For us to have our family? Here," she orders like its a soft word of please, reaching for his hand to press against the swell of her belly. 

Why she grabbed his cold, golden hand, though. He doesn't think she's truthfully seen him for years either. What a sad, lonely pair they make, he thinks. How disparate and forlorn. What a sham they've lived.

"I shouldn't have come back," he realizes in a murmur. It's only a still, small voice that grows from years of his aching heart wanting to believe in her like love and a happy ending. His packed saddle bag and his sword ready. Why it's taken him so long to forsake what she sees as just with what he believes as dishonor, he doesn't know, but this path is one a lonely, would-be knight took once, sunshine in her pale hair, and he's managed more of a farewell to her than he's ever been given from his sister. 

He doesn't look back when he goes. He doesn't expect he'll ever return, really, but honor calls his name like a voice once cut through his dreams. 

 

He sees the emblems of Lannister and Targaryen and Stark all on horses waiting outside this Crossroads Inn. 

It isn't much of a bet or a hope, but as he steps inside. As he quietly looks for what he's been indirectly looking for in years of waiting for his soul to beckon against reason for truth and valor, the chance to be the man he's proved to be in blinks and in seconds of doubt. 

While some fat boy talks loudly about baking bread while Pod pretends not to smile into his ale when he sees him, Brienne catches his eyes, too, and it's like the world may as well be fire. 

"Ser Jaime," she calls with water in her throat, water coloring her eyes impossibly blue. In this tavern, no one else even spares them a glance, not even when she stands, when covered in furs, armed with their golden promise of an oath etched in a blade. She's the better person between the both of them; she's that first breath he took from a bath and from that lake. "I'm grateful," she continues with her broken, cracking voice, her chin held high, "but you were well away. Why come back?"

On this snow-soaked floor, he drops to his knees. He thinks he'll rise again a knight named by the Seven, one worthy of the emotion so vibrant on her shining face. "Brienne," he says. 

_I dreamed of you._


End file.
